


Halyloft

by BehindTheCellarDoor



Category: Benjaminutes - Fandom, Tales From Riftdale, The Riftdale Chronicles (Web Series)
Genre: Drug Use, Guns, M/M, multi-level-marketing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22122775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BehindTheCellarDoor/pseuds/BehindTheCellarDoor
Summary: Christian and Smith are secretly dating. A degenerate criminal and a ball of sunshine cop, what could possibly go wrong in there?
Relationships: Christian/Smith (Riftdale)
Kudos: 2





	Halyloft

Smith approached the door as calmly as he was able to. The cheap motel keychain concealed in his sweaty palm, the white letters printed on it a long time ago threatening to rub away. The cold night air prickled the skin on the back of his neck, or maybe it was just the nervousness acting up again. He took a deep breath to stable himself as he stood in front of room 109, looking at both sides of the corridor to ensure no one was watching, no one that knew him, especially no one from the precinct. God knew he would never hear the end of it if someone found out what he was doing here, with whom, and to what end. He had walked all the way to the Hayloft Inn, their usual rendezvous spot, not that he had a car to take there either way; a taxi was out of the question, it represented a witness and as much as he liked making friends he knew he had to be careful in this endeavor. As soon as the door opened he was being pulled inside by hands grabbing onto the front of his shirt, pressing him against the wall. The door was kicked closed behind him, leaving them in darkness. 

“You are late,” said the man holding him in place. 

“Well, I read in a magazine that people like to be fashionably late. If you ask me I am not exactly sure what is fashionable about making someone wait for you, I certainly wouldn’t find it as a very fashionable thing to do, but the magazine said that-”

“You talk too much, Smith,” the man interrupted him and promptly shut him up with a kiss on the lips. Smith didn’t complain, smiling against the other. The shorter man let go of him, dusting something off Smith’s shirt, and moved to flick the lamp on at a nearby table. 

Smith took off his jacket and placed it on the backrest of one of the chairs. He sniffed the air with a quizzical look, the smell was unmistakable.

“Got us fried chicken on the way here,” the man said, sitting down across him. “Paid for it and all,” he joked. Well, not actually that much of a joke as much as it was a simple clarification. When you are a criminal it is much harder to joke around things like stealing fried chicken, specially if you have a track record of robbing chili fries stands and snatching onion rings from people on parks. Nevertheless, he had paid for the food and knowing it made Smith crack a big smile. 

“Aw, you shouldn’t have, baby.”

“Call me baby again and I will actually shoot you.” His name is Christian, yet aside from the priest getup he is pretty much nothing of the sort. “Don’t get too excited, I was hungry either way.” He rolled his eyes but still his lips curled almost imperceptibly upward. Something inside him still felt strange about having someone actually like him, and it showed, it really did. 

Christian had set paper plates before Smith arrived, the kind that comes in ninety-nine cents packs and is holiday themed with matching napkins. The bucket of chicken sat between them, two red SOLO cups already served with cheap wine coolers next to an unlit tea candle he had forgotten; it did explain why it felt too dark as he waited for Smith to get there, twirling his thumbs and pacing near the entrance. He had thought maybe this time he wouldn’t show up and he would be left waiting like a fool. Maybe a knock would come at the door and when he opened he would be greeted by a different cop and taken to the precinct, the officer laughing at him for being stupid enough to think this was anything more than a sting operation Smith had to suffer through to get him.  
But again his fears had been for nothing, it seemed. Smith was there, sitting in front of him, splitting drumsticks between them with his dumb monochrome smile. 

Smith talked a lot while they ate, mostly about his day at the precinct. One unaware of the topic of conversation might mistake it for the adventurous type, but that was Smith, he positively chirped about the new forms and paperwork he had to file like others might talk about car chases. Not that he found them particularly fun and exciting, he wasn’t that crazy, no, but he loved his job and if it meant filling a bunch of boring paperwork he was sure going to make the most of it. 

They finished eating, cleaned up a little, and turned on the TV. Smith took off his shoes before he settled on the too-small-for-him bed. He patted the spot next to him with a smile and Christian followed, the smaller frame perfectly fit at Smith’s side. Christian hadn’t bothered to take off his combat boots: what if they needed to run? He had to be prepared. 

“You smell… nice?” it was half a question but he tried to not sound too surprised because, surprisingly enough, Christian happened to be sensitive about those matters, made evident by the subtle embarrassed blush that colored his cheeks. 

“Uhh, thanks, I got a new cologne at the SEARS.”

“Did you-”

“I stole it from the SEARS.” 

Christian turned to look at Smith, searching his face for something. Smith stared back at him with no expression. Then, slowly, they both broke in laughter, the kind that makes your sides hurt and brings a tear to your eyes. Christian sighed and placed his head on Smith’s chest with an arm around his shoulders keeping him close. He was not used to this, to the warmth of another human being, at least the kind of warmth that didn’t come with a price tag and a couple diseases (not that he was particularly clean to be honest). This wasn’t that, their thing wasn’t about that. He was not yet sure what it was all about, actually, but he was not going to mess it up like he did with everything else.

“What are you thinking about?” Came Smith’s voice from above his head.

“Maybe I should get into mlms.”

Smith blinked at Christian.

“Uhm… the chocolates? I really like those, very colorful candies.”

“No. Multi-level-marketing, Smith. I am thinking of getting into Multi-Level-Marketing.”

“Oh! Oh that’s swell! So does that mean you would stop the whole criminal thing? I would support this multiple level market of yours.” 

Christian quirked an eyebrow and laid on his side, his head propped up.

“You ever dream of being your own boss, Smith? What if I told you it is at the reach of your hand?”

Smith opened his mouth in surprise, his one singular eye wide. 

“Now that you say it… yes! Yes I have! How?”

“God, you truly would be the perfect mark. I would love to scam you.”

Ah, so it was part of his criminal thing after all. Smith slapped him lightly on the arm. 

“Stop trying to trick me into participating in your crime shenanigans,” he said with a frown. Christian leaned closer.

“Aren’t you tired of being nice, Smith? Don’t you want to go ape shit?”

“You stop that.”

Christian just laughed through his nose and shifted around until he was comfortably resting against the grey man. On the television, the titular doctor called his patient an idiot and popped two pills inside his mouth. Smith narrowed his eye at the action and then continued watching, an idle hand scratching the priest’s head. It dawned on Christian he hadn’t had a line in more than an hour and his nose was beginning to itch for a fix. He knew Smith didn’t like him doing it, not that he really blamed him for thinking the coke wasn’t the sharpest idea. But what was he supposed to do? Get clean? Be sober? Please…

“I need a bump,” he said, sitting up. Smith took the opportunity to stretch like a cat, Christian’s duffel bag still by his feet. The priest reached inside the pocket of his shirt and procured a small bag of cocaine, using the longer nail on his pinkie to fish some out. He snorted the powder and slung his head back, falling again on the bed with his eyes closed. “Good shit right there.”

Smith scrunched his nose with a frown. 

“Do you need to do that right next to me?”

“Do you need to be a little bitch all the time? It’s just coke, it’s not like I am doing meth.” A good and logical statement, of course. 

“I pretty much would prefer if you did that somewhere else, like the bathroom, or even better if it was not done at all.”

“We’ve talked about this,” his voice was a tad more serious. “I don’t wanna be changed, stop trying.”

Smith wasn’t one to quit anything he started, he was more of an annoyingly persevering guy, precisely the kind that would obsess about befriending everyone in a quest to make the world a better place. He wasn’t always so nice, at least not to the degree he was now. The incident had changed him in more ways that he was able to articulate. Sometimes he wondered if the bullet had grazed a certain part of his brain and the result was this, if maybe something had truly gotten fucked up and it was not only his eye he had lost; how much more had he actually parted ways with? He worried that some of his personality had been erased and reduced him to the overly positive man he is now. 

Still not everything had changed, perhaps his sunny disposition was relatively new (in this intensity) but his stubbornness was not news to anyone. And this is what this was about: stubbornness on both sides of the equation. Smith was decided to love Christian and infect him with goodness, turn the criminal into an honest man, drain out the darkness harboring inside him. Christian, on the other side…

Christian wanted to drag Smith to his side, to strip him from all that excess sunshine, to prove no one was that happy. Misery loves company and he was due for some of that. For now, they remained in balance, the influences canceling each-other out, and that pissed him off. It pissed him even more to acknowledge that a corner of his brain was hopeful Smith would succeed and he would be pulled out from all this suffering, given a brand new start with him. It pissed him off to think of futures that were never going to exist. He scooted closer to Smith and turned the volume up on the television. 

  
It had been three months since they had started whatever this was. Smith, sure that The Priest could be brought to justice and rehabilitated, had tracked him down to a shady part of town. He was no idiot, he was in fact a very good detective despite playing the part of the dumb giant. Smith found Christian passed out in a warehouse, clutching a revolver in his hand, next to a huge (almost comically so) pile of cocaine. Vulnerable but at the same time menacing, like a huge spider minding its business in a web made in someone’s closet. That is exactly how Christian looked like, except more beaten up and borderline pathetic.   
Smith approached him cautiously, his gun holstered and his handcuffs at the ready. It looked like they were alone, not that he was expecting anyone, the hostage had been already released and The Priest worked alone. Just as he was getting closer, close enough to touch him, the man woke up. Someone might as well have poured a bucket of cold water over him to get such a violent waking up reaction. A bullet flew past Smith as the priest fired his gun before his eyes even focused. Smith jumped back with his hands outstretched before him.

“Hey, hey, no need to be startled, sir!”

“Who the fuck are you?!” Christian growled, trying to get on his feet but clearly still too groggy to have his reflexes function properly. He took a better look at the stranger and squinted. “Wait a fucking minute, I know you…” the realization dawned on him. They were here to capture him and he was literally cornered. He pointed his gun at Smith.

“I am alone, I am not here to hurt you.”

“You are literally holding handcuffs, fuckass.”

Smith quickly put them back on his belt, calculating in his head how likely he was to die at the hands of this crazy man. This was proving to be harder than he had previously thought… he was never good at that whole probability thing. 

“Sorry, sorry, I just want to talk, I promise.”

Christian slightly lowered his gun, still very much trained on him but at least not pointing at the middle of his chest. 

“Then talk.”

Back in the Hayloft, Smith and Christian had fallen asleep with the TV on. It was one of the rare occasions where Christian could actually sleep without having to worry about getting jumped or murdered or something worse. The room wasn’t cold like the places he used to stay at, mostly dingy rooms at abandoned buildings, warehouses, alleys… this room was warm, and the warmth of Smith’s embrace coaxed him into a nice light slumber. Smith was already snoring, arms and legs around his smaller partner, drooling onto the pillow. On the television an ad for really sharp knives was urging them to call now to get another set. 

A pounding at the door woke them up. 

“Smith?! I know you are in there!”

Smith sat up, his heart almost beating out of his chest at the familiar voice. Christian fell off the bed, rushing to get up and pick up his things. The man outside had a burning hate for him and a gun. Time to run.  
Smith pushed Christian into the bathroom, giving him a peck on the cheek, then went to open the door before the other kicked it down.

“H-hey, Chief…”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is or where it is going or why am I posting it at all.  
> Inspired by the song Hayloft by Mother Mother.


End file.
